Dresden to Kiel: Part 1 Great Continental Railway Journeys


Dresden to Kiel: Part 1

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I'm embarking on a new railway adventure that will take me

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across the heart of Europe.

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I'll be using this, my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide,

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dated 1913, which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel

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for the British tourist.

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It told travellers where to go, what to see,

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and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks

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crisscrossing the continent.

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Now, a century later, I'm using my copy to reveal

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an era of great optimism and energy,

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where technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing.

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I want to rediscover that lost Europe that, in 1913, could not know

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that its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.

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I'm travelling through Germany,

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powerhouse of today's European Union.

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100 years ago,

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it already looked muscular, industrially and politically.

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If I'd been travelling on these tracks in 1913,

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I'd be visiting quite a new country.

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The Kingdom of Prussia had merged with or absorbed

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various principalities and duchies

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to form the thoroughly modern industrial state of Germany.

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British travellers here a century ago viewed its power

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and success with a mixture of admiration, envy and fear.

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On this journey, I'll discover how Kaiser Wilhelm II's

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militarism threatened Europe's fragile balance of power.

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The Navy built two battleships a year.

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So, that was really a tremendous fleet.

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I'll let Bradshaw's steer me towards Germany's music and culture...

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HE SPEAKS GERMAN MENACINGLY

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..attempt a 1913 equivalent of a Jane Fonda workout...

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-And up and down... Come on!

-NO!

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..see model railway making on the grandest of scales...

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This is an absolute paradise for model lovers,

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for anybody who loves trains.

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..and sample Germany's favourite tipple...

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What does your expert palate tell you?

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-It is perfect, isn't it?

-It's pretty good, isn't it?

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My journey starts in Dresden,

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close to the border with the Czech Republic,

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then heads north on Germany's oldest long-distance railway,

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through the eastern states, to the musical city of Leipzig.

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Continuing north into Lower Saxony,

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I'll travel to Braunschweig

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before arriving at the prosperous port of Hamburg.

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My journey will end at the home of

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Germany's Imperial Navy.

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In the years before the First World War,

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the British King had the title Duke of Saxony.

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My first stop is its capital, Dresden.

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My Bradshaw's says it's always been,

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"one of the most frequented cities in Germany.

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"There are English and American quarters.

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"As a city for art, music, and good society,

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"Dresden cannot be excelled."

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If only I'd known it in those days.

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Fortunately, thanks to the railways in 1913,

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thousands of British tourists could enjoy this jewel of a city

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when it sparkled at its brightest.

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Dresden, on the river Elbe,

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is the birthplace of Kings, Queens and Consorts.

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Queen Victoria's mother was German and in 1840, Victoria married

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her German first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,

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strengthening further the dynastic bond between Britain and Germany.

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As though to demonstrate German engineering prowess,

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at the end of the 19th century,

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Dresden was given a superb station on two levels -

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one with a terminus and one for the through trains.

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It was, of course, destroyed by bombs in World War II.

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And then for the 45 years that East Germany

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was a Soviet satellite state, the station was neglected.

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But it was restored at the beginning of the 21st century

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and the British architects Foster and Partners

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designed a roof, which is Teflon-coated

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and covers 30,000 square metres.

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Dresden is now home to more than half a million people.

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At the time of my Bradshaw's,

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the city was as important

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a cultural destination as Prague, Paris or Berlin.

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Dresden's golden age had been the 18th century,

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when its beauty was captured

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in a painting by Canaletto,

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and it became known as Florence on the Elbe.

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Architecture aside,

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Dresden is a place of great cultural interest for me.

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A favourite opera composer, Richard Wagner,

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spent nearly 20 years here.

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When my Bradshaw's guide was published in 1913, the world

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was celebrating the centenary of Richard Wagner,

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so he was born just over 200 years ago in nearby Leipzig.

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Now, many people don't like Wagner, they find him long and loud,

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and certainly, he's politically controversial, but I am a fan.

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I think for his understanding of humanity,

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he is one of the greatest artists of history.

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I think his most absorbing work is his Ring Cycle of four epic operas,

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which took him 26 years to write and which I find extraordinarily deep.

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HE SINGS

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But Dresden is associated with

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one of his very early pieces.

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In 1842, Dresden's Semper Opera House invited Wagner

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to premiere his grand tragic tale about two rival Roman families -

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called Rienzi.

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I'm meeting Cosima Curth to find out how it was received.

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It was a success, then, Rienzi?

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It was a great success.

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He didn't like it very much,

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he said it was like crying around.

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But it made him popular.

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Rienzi is more or less very similar to the Grand Opera

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like they had at the time.

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Wagner then stayed in Dresden after that?

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Yeah. First of all, he liked the town,

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because it was the first town where he had a lot of success.

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And he wanted to present a second opera here a few months later,

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which was the Flying Dutchman.

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Wagner was also a fine conductor,

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likened by his contemporaries to a general in battle.

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He was the first who conducted directly to the musicians.

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He used to like to use the baton as well.

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There's a nice story about it. Sometimes, he forgot it,

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so he took a ladle that was given to him by a musician

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and he broke the handle and conducted with that.

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But even nowadays, we have fantastic conductors,

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but they use two sticks to conduct.

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But nobody's done it with a ladle.

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Never again! Never again!

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In Dresden, Wagner briefly helped to orchestrate a military operation.

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In a period of revolutions across the continent,

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people in Dresden took to the streets.

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Wagner became very actively involved in politics, didn't he, in 1849?

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What was it that happened?

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In the 19th century, Dresden was a really international town,

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open to many countries, but the living conditions for the workers

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weren't at the highest condition.

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That's why Marx published his thesis of a new world,

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and this caused a lot of trouble, and started a movement of a revolution,

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which started in Dresden in 1849.

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And Wagner was drawn in to that, wasn't he?

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Yeah. He was a great enthusiast about these changes in living conditions.

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He himself was especially interested in the way that musicians were paid.

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That maybe the opera shouldn't be owned by the King, but owned by the masses.

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The authorities sought help from Prussia, which used a new invention,

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railways, to send troops.

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And what job was given to Wagner in this revolution?

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He had a fantastic job.

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He had to climb up to the tower of one of our churches,

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and to watch where the army is coming from.

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And to announce it to somebody else.

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And because it was such a hard job, he asked to send

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-a bottle of wine to him.

-And that would help with his work!

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Over 200 rebels were killed in the fighting

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and although Wagner escaped, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

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So that was bye-bye, Dresden for Richard Wagner.

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Yeah. Not forever. He came later on back to Dresden

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because his wife stayed in Dresden,

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and she herself tried to make him

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apologise and to be accepted again as another member of society.

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She could do so and she succeeded in doing.

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The now beautifully restored Lutheran Church of Our Lady -

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the Frauenkirche - is symbolic of what the Germans have experienced

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since British tourists first followed my guide here.

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Destroyed by allied bombing in 1945,

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for decades, its ruins constituted

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an anti-war memorial.

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When East and West Germany were reunified in 1990,

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the church was painstakingly reconstructed.

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The Frauenkirche manages to be both pretty and overpowering,

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which is perhaps why the people of Dresden love it so much.

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In 1843, it was the scene of an extraordinary choral work,

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with an orchestra of 100 and a choir of 1,100.

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The conductor was one Richard Wagner,

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the composer was one Richard Wagner,

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and the subject was the Last Supper of Christ.

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CHORAL SINGING

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Today, the Frauenkirche symbolises the rebirth of Dresden

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following the destruction of its buildings and population.

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DRAMATIC CHORAL MUSIC

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Early travellers to Dresden

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I'm sure would have remarked

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on the romantic look

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and feel of the place.

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In 1913, the city was in the grip of a health craze -

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a new philosophy of well-being called Naturheilkunde,

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or naturopathy, had taken hold.

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And its mantra was,

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a healthy mind in a healthy body.

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Like the rest of Europe, Dresden had experienced industrialisation,

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bringing with it smoky factory chimneys

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and polluted atmosphere and water.

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But the fresh air of the hills around the city

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became a magnet for international health tourists.

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I'm headed for Weisser Hirsch. Bradshaw's tells me,

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"It's a well-known health resort

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"that's grown from a village in recent years

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"and now has villas, hotels and sanatoriums of the highest repute,

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"reached by electric car from Dresden."

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I wondered what an electric car might be.

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It turns out to be a thoroughly original suspended railway.

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It's one of the oldest suspension railways in the world.

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It climbs 84 metres and is 274 metres long.

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In 1913, it also provided an easy escape

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for Europe's wealthy

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and leisured elite,

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intent on improving their physical health and fitness.

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Prussian nobility and Russian royalty rubbed shoulders

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with well-heeled merchants

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and military top brass, actors,

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singers and writers.

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-Eckhard.

-Hi, Michael!

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'I'm meeting author Eckhard Bahr at the once grand and famous

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'spa resort Der Weisser Hirsch, now decidedly faded and overgrown.'

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I get the impression that at the beginning of the 20th century,

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there was a new interest in health.

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-That's true.

-Coming up to the top of a hill like this,

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people wanted to get away from the industrial cities?

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That's right. There was a sense of back to nature

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and Dr Lahmann, who was a physician of that time, he combined

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this new feeling, this new style of thinking with a great new idea.

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So he combined health care and treatments

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with a new sense of fresh air,

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good portion of diet,

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and also, a good sense of humour.

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'Dr Heinrich Lahmann, a pioneer of food and health treatments,

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'was a man ahead of his time,

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'recommending diet and exercise, instead of prescription drugs.'

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-The buildings were clearly very impressive.

-That's true.

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And la toura sanat... Latin for what?

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Nature cures all, is that it?

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Yes, nature cures, like water cures, and also fresh air,

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baths in the sunshine.

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This, I take it, is the bath house?

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That's true, yes. The bath house.

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There was a female bath for the ladies

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and a bath for the gentlemen.

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What sort of treatments did Dr Lahmann propose?

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They got showers,

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extremely pointed to different parts of the body

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and then again, different kinds of light,

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warm and cold. So it was a strange combination of types.

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For instance, they were sitting in a box

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and this was full of electric lights.

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So they got even small electric shocks.

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Then he sent them out to the forest nearly naked.

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They wear very small piece of clothes

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and they stood still in the surroundings

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and listened to the voices of the birds.

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I'm sure that would be very good for you!

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By 1913, more than 7,000 guests

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had visited Der Weisser Hirsch.

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And many of them were already wedded

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to the latest physical exercise regime.

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The Mr Motivator of his day

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was famous Danish athlete JP Muller.

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His bestselling fitness book, My System,

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was designed to turn parlour dandies

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into men of iron, in just six weeks.

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Fitness instructor Grit Buechner is going to put me through my paces.

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This person here is not wearing many clothes.

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What was the appropriate clothing for the Muller?

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Muller said you need not a lot of clothes.

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You go outside and if it's cold or it's hot,

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-that's enough to make you harder, if you don't have a lot clothes...

-Mmm.

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And so can you show me the system?

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Yes, I can show you, but please, not in this clothes.

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Sports clothes or less clothes.

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I'll go and get less clothes, yeah!

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# Keep young and beautiful

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# It's your duty to be beautiful... #

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Muller's magical formula

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consists of 18 different exercises,

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practised daily during a 15-minute workout.

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Right. I think I'm ready.

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-OK, bend, short and sharp.

-Short and sharp.

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-13 times.

-What?!

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-Yep. Stretch your knee.

-OK.

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What's with your leg?

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-Look at Ticha. She do it right.

-Hello, Ticha.

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'The more you do over the six weeks,

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'the stronger and fitter you should become.'

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Last three, do as high as you can. One...

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Oh! Oh!

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-Are you warm?

-Yep, warmed up.

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-And you feel it in your legs?

-Oh, gosh, yes.

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-We do the next.

-Wow, well, if I get a figure like that,

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-it'll be worth it.

-Do this.

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-What?!

-What's with your legs?

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-I can't reach my toes.

-You must stretch.

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Have we done our 15 minutes yet?

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With sales of over two million,

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My System was endorsed by doctors and kings.

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The Czech writer Franz Kafka swore by it, and fitness regimes today

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owe much to his once radical ideas.

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Right leg, left leg.

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This is quite tiring.

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And up, and down. Come on!

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-NO! No more!

-Yeah!

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Good job!

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Kafka wrote really extraordinary stories.

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He gave a word to the English language

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for things that were really bizarre - Kafkaesque.

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If you're ever asked if you saw something Kafkaesque, say yes.

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Michael Portillo doing gymnastics!

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On this new day,

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I'll be embarking on a highly historic railway line,

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which first opened in 1839.

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My next stop is Leipzig, which my Bradshaw's tells me

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is a town of great commercial importance.

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It's the seat of the Supreme Law Courts of the German Empire

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and its university is ancient and renowned.

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And I'm travelling on tracks that

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are pretty significant too, as this was the first major

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long-distance railway made in Germany,

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and it's almost as British as my Bradshaw's!

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In the 19th century, the main industry in Saxony was textiles -

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linen and woollen cloth.

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Economist Friederich List,

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seeing the great possibilities that the railways had offered

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British industry, conceived in the 1830s

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a railway unifying the states of Germany.

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And who better to build it than British engineers?

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Rail historian John Lace is an expert on the line.

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-Hello, John.

-Hello, Michael. Good morning.

-Good to see you.

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So this railway line from Dresden to Leipzig

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plays a very important part in German railway history.

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How did the railway actually come to be built?

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The Leipzig directors approached James Walker, who then was President

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of the Institute of Civil Engineers in London.

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And he came across with his young assistant, James Hawkshaw,

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who was 23, to survey the line between.

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Walker took two weeks. At the end of it, he said,

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"I've done all I need to do, there is more work for me back in Britain,"

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and he left Hawkshaw to walk the route endlessly.

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Engineers like Hawkshaw faced a huge challenge,

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to get 116 kilometres of route just right.

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I'd like to show you this map, actually,

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which gives a really good overview of the entire line

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and shows what John Hawkshaw had created.

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It's a very detailed map and it shows every bridge

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and every crossing, and all the cuttings there were

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and the one tunnel that was built at Auber.

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It's a relatively simple line.

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It doesn't have a lot of ups and downs?

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No. James Walker had been one of the developers of

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the Leeds-Selby line, which is a very flat line,

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and when he proposed this line, the directors were overjoyed.

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To complement the British construction know-how,

0:21:510:21:54

the Leipzig Dresden Railway Company ordered 16 British locomotives.

0:21:540:21:59

Its first coal-powered steam engine was called Komet.

0:22:010:22:06

John Robson, who was a driver with

0:22:060:22:08

the Liverpool-Manchester railway line,

0:22:080:22:10

accompanied the first Komet from Bolton to Liverpool docks to Hamburg,

0:22:100:22:15

down the Elbe, 15 crates.

0:22:150:22:18

Robson was skilful enough to re-assemble those 15 crates

0:22:180:22:22

into a working locomotive.

0:22:220:22:25

An extraordinary thought. How fast was Komet in those early days?

0:22:250:22:29

Oh, between four and six miles per hour.

0:22:290:22:31

It didn't travel at the speed that this train is travelling now.

0:22:310:22:34

With Friedrich List's ambition fast becoming a reality,

0:22:380:22:41

the people of Saxony flocked to experience train travel.

0:22:410:22:45

There were up to six trains per day passing up and down

0:22:450:22:48

on the Leipzig to Dresden line.

0:22:480:22:51

Commercially, it was also a success,

0:22:510:22:53

finally giving businesses a quick way to move goods to the River Elbe.

0:22:530:22:57

Leipzig is a city made of music.

0:22:590:23:02

It was home to Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn

0:23:020:23:06

and is famous for its Opera House and the St Thomas's Boys' Choir.

0:23:060:23:11

But as well as being a centre of culture, thanks to the railway,

0:23:140:23:18

it's also one of Germany's leading commercial cities.

0:23:180:23:21

The railway station in Leipzig, according to Bradshaw's,

0:23:250:23:29

is the largest in Europe, and it's still thought to be

0:23:290:23:32

the biggest in our continent by floor area.

0:23:320:23:34

With its 24 platforms and six railway sheds.

0:23:340:23:37

And now since the fall of Communism, vast parts of the station

0:23:370:23:41

have been converted to a shopping complex.

0:23:410:23:44

In 1913, Leipzig was at the heart of

0:23:470:23:50

one of the most productive areas in Europe.

0:23:500:23:53

Germany's late industrial revolution

0:23:530:23:55

meant that entrepreneurs could take full advantage of

0:23:550:23:58

new technology and manufacturing methods.

0:23:580:24:01

To appreciate how productive and self-confident

0:24:020:24:06

Germany had become,

0:24:060:24:07

I'm heading by tram to the west of the city, to the suburb of Plagwitz.

0:24:070:24:11

It's home to what was

0:24:110:24:13

one of the largest cotton spinning mills in Europe.

0:24:130:24:17

I've arranged to meet Bertram Schultze,

0:24:170:24:19

who runs the Spinnerei today.

0:24:190:24:22

-Hello, Bertram.

-Hello, very welcome.

0:24:230:24:26

We're walking along tracks.

0:24:260:24:28

Were the railways very important to the development of this place?

0:24:280:24:31

Actually, it was essential.

0:24:310:24:33

They bought this property of about 100,000 square metres,

0:24:330:24:36

because the developer over 100 years ago, whose name was Dr Karl Heiner,

0:24:360:24:41

had arranged that the tracks

0:24:410:24:42

were brought in to the big properties so that the goods

0:24:420:24:45

could come in, the raw materials, and the goods could go out again.

0:24:450:24:49

Well, they founded the place in 1884, based on this market research

0:24:490:24:53

that it would be profitable to create a big inner German

0:24:530:24:57

cotton spinning mill producing mainly the thicker threads.

0:24:570:25:01

It meant that the mill could spin the cotton itself,

0:25:050:25:08

rather than rely on foreign imports.

0:25:080:25:11

So a visitor coming here in 1913, using this guidebook,

0:25:120:25:15

would have found the factory in full production?

0:25:150:25:19

Yeah, full scale, very lively, I guess.

0:25:190:25:21

Working a three-shift system,

0:25:210:25:23

so going through all the time.

0:25:230:25:26

The Spinnerei's 1,600 workers

0:25:270:25:30

were processing 20,000 bales of cotton

0:25:300:25:33

into five million kilograms of thread.

0:25:330:25:36

Bertram wants to show me

0:25:360:25:38

what's left of just one of the huge spinning rooms,

0:25:380:25:41

where productivity reached unassailable levels.

0:25:410:25:44

This is the old elevator.

0:25:450:25:47

We just put in very new technique into it, so we should feel safe.

0:25:470:25:51

Wow, what a vast space!

0:25:520:25:54

This is where we still have the full scale 4,000 square metres

0:25:560:26:01

on one layer, where you can still have the feeling of

0:26:010:26:04

how it worked with the machinery in here.

0:26:040:26:06

So they had the machinery actually going in long lines like this

0:26:060:26:10

between the columns. And...

0:26:100:26:13

you must imagine a 20-metre machine and people working on it.

0:26:130:26:18

Now it is quite hot,

0:26:180:26:20

so with the machinery, it must have been hotter, so they had

0:26:200:26:23

a very early air conditioning and air moisturing system in here,

0:26:230:26:27

which was in the middle, where you can see the walls back there.

0:26:270:26:30

While the air conditioning

0:26:300:26:31

is testament to German engineering prowess,

0:26:310:26:34

the mill also illustrates what Germany regarded as

0:26:340:26:37

a great weakness - the lack of colonies.

0:26:370:26:40

As the imperial powers of Europe

0:26:400:26:43

scrambled to carve up Africa between them, Germany was late to the table,

0:26:430:26:47

securing only a few colonies in the south and west

0:26:470:26:50

and modern-day Tanzania in the east.

0:26:500:26:54

This paucity rankled the Kaiser,

0:26:540:26:56

who wanted new markets for goods and new sources of raw materials.

0:26:560:27:00

Germany was able to use the territory in Tanzania

0:27:020:27:04

to grow its own cotton.

0:27:040:27:06

Germany, yeah, but especially the cotton spinning mill.

0:27:060:27:10

I think Tanzania was used for different reasons as well,

0:27:100:27:14

but this company had their colonies down there, about 30,000 hectares,

0:27:140:27:19

so it was really quite a big space,

0:27:190:27:21

which they turned into farmland and tried to grow their own cotton.

0:27:210:27:25

Cotton growing conditions in Tanzania were hard. Pests put paid

0:27:270:27:30

to two-thirds of the harvest in the second year and the scheme failed.

0:27:300:27:34

Today, the cotton machines are long gone and in their place is art.

0:27:390:27:43

Historically, the most renowned artists of Leipzig were musicians.

0:27:480:27:52

On the second part of my journey through Germany,

0:27:570:28:00

I'll sample the surprising range of music

0:28:000:28:02

to emerge from Leipzig...

0:28:020:28:04

# Three little maids from school are we

0:28:040:28:06

# Pert as a schoolgirl well can be

0:28:060:28:08

# Filled to the brim with girlish glee

0:28:080:28:10

# Three little maids from school... #

0:28:100:28:12

..help to restore a century-old tunnel...

0:28:120:28:14

This might seem like a DIY job,

0:28:140:28:17

but this is to protect future generations from lead poisoning.

0:28:170:28:21

..and leave a minute reminder of my visit

0:28:210:28:24

to the world's greatest model railway.

0:28:240:28:26

Does my Bradshaw look big in this?!

0:28:260:28:28

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